Comment by Omnicrom

Interesting. Sha in Pandaria are negative emotions made Incarnate, so the highest level enchantments for killing stuff will literally be made by crystalized hate and anger. Does this mean that the Sith have a point?

Comment by pthor1234

Enchanters now have a daily cooldown that allow them to create a Sha Crystal from 5 Ethereal Shard. For the time being in MoP, it looks like enchanters will be able to up and down convert all their materials at will, albeit with losses, except for the daily CD on Sha Crystals.

The losses on the items from down-converting are quite hefty, especially from the Sha Crystal down to Ethereal Shard. If a player was to take 125 spirit dust, they could up-convert all the way to a Sha Crystal, but breaking it back down would only yield 18 spirit dust back, for a staggering 14.4% efficiency rate.

Comment by Longclaw

In MoP, it looks like all the enchanting mats for the expansion will be able to be converted from one to the other by Enchanters. This is good; no mats will be wasted, and all mats will be linked to one another in price, loosely. It works like this:

Going in the other direction doesn't yield as many, however; a shard yields just three essences, and an essence yields just three dust.Converting upwards, you can make an Ethereal shard with 25 dust, but converting a shard down to dust yields just 9 dust.

Sha Crystals work slightly differently. They can be broken down into shards at a ratio of 1 to 2 via this, but the only way to convert up to them is with this, which as you'll notice has a one-day cooldown (presumable resetting at midnight like the Cata Alchemy transmutes).

This is, IMHO, a fantastic design. First of all, we won't have two hundred million stacks of dust sitting on the AH and never selling, thank the Titans.

This also means that the price of an Ethereal Shard will pretty much always be worth more than nine dusts, but never worth more than 25 of them. It also means that the price of dust will be pulled UP by the price of shards more often than the other way around. Dusts will likely hover around 1/25 of the price of a shard, and essences will likely hover around 1/5 of a shard.

And with the way the Sha Crystals are set up, the price of Shards will be pulled up by the demand for Crystals, which are always the most sought-after, especially in the beginning of the xpac. Shards will probably go for a bit less than 1/5 of a crystal, since converting them upwards into crystals will be limited by to one per day per Enchanter. And because of that cooldown, the price of Crystals will stay high enough to be profitable, without being nearly as preposterously overpriced as they were at the beginning of Cataclysm.

And best of all: Every single conversion will be performed by an Enchanter. The Enchanters will make money from regulating the prices of the mats, to everyone's benefit.

Thank you, Blizzard. You nailed it.

Comment by smith2031

Note: This crystal is used in recipes obtained from acquiring revered reputation with the August Celestials and the Shado-Pan. Before people can start grinding rep with these factions they have to be revered with the Golden Lotus. Thus, it's going to be a while before these enchants, and therefore, Sha Crystals, will be used.

Comment by pengo

A good way to farm these is by killling the rare spawns you can find in all pandaren continents.I usually kill 5-10 rares a day and get 1 sha crystal or morecombined with the enchanting recipe, thats 2-3 crystals per day :)

Prices on AH are now slowly dropping on my server, but the enchants are still worth quite a chunk of money

Comment by Ping

These are also contained in Big Bag of Wonders, which drops from Yul Wildpaw, a Pandaren rare in Townlong Steppes (on a cliff to the east of Niuzao Temple 31.9, 62.0). According to this site, the bag has about a 10% drop chance and also contains Spirit Dust, Ethereal Shards and Mysterious Essence.

Comment by Molander

One way to farm these are from rares. Since rares in pandaria have a pretty decent respawn rate and some can drop BoP epic items it's a pretty good alternative if you have an enchater friend to join you or are one yourself.

Another way could be scenarios since they can drop 476ilvl epics, but I'm not sure how high the droprate for them are and it's only usefull if you're an enchater.

And yeah, you could go raidfinder for some and make 1 Sha Crystal/day from 5 Etheral Shards.

Comment by Qtena

What seems to be missing is a spell/quest to obtain Sha Crystals using Spirits of Harmony.

I sourly miss it here, since the amount of Sha Crystals required for weapon enchants (10) is punishing. My Priest is Shadow with Discipline as second, and Druid is Resto/Feral, and after a couple of weapon drops it's becoming really daunting. With the punishing price for extra Sha gems, gemming and enchanting a new Sha weapon for Feral/Discipline would set me back about 15k gold. I end up sincerely hoping that it doesn't drop - darn, healer mace did drop and is sitting at the bank. The idea of lvling alts which WILL require weapon enchants makes my hair stand on end - ok, DK may proceed.

Enchanting would be the only profession where I would be really tempted to use such an alternative - weapon enchants are something that is needed over and over again, compared to daily cds creating mats for craftables that may soon become obsolete.

Comment by nillaf

It is worth noting that the Horde can exchange spirit of harmony for ethereal shard one-for-one with Danky at the Shrine of Two moons, allowing a 'chanter to convert motes of harmony into sha crystals using his 16-plant farming plot dedicated to windbell plants as a resource:

Comment by ewok93

BoE epics from rares can be disenchanted into a crystal, and they're often on the auction house for less than a crystal, AND you can get 2.

Comment by TheQuasars

Making your main character an enchanter this expansion is pretty nice as you can disenchant any loot you don't need from LFR, and use the materials to give yourself the otherwise "expensive" enchants.

Comment by dreamynights

As on Patch 5.2, Sha Crystals can now be obtained by using extra honor to buy Malevolent gear and disenchanting them. You can still trade justice points for honor points in your main city to buy even more PVP gear. There does not seem to be a way for non-enchanters to buy BoE gear and have a friend disenchant though (like Cata PvE boots).

Do this along with one Sha crystal a day (plant Magebulb Seeds in Valley of Four Winds) and disenchanting LFR gear, you should have a good supply of Sha crystals if you are enchanter. For non-enchanters, Sha crystals can be obtained with BoE epic drops and by selecting disenchant roll in your normal/heroic raid groups (not LFR).

Comment by MacForGaming

why is the ah price 251g on my server they are 300g

Comment by lecanard2

man put it on a chain u be lookin like Gallywix

Comment by McGrignr

Patch 5.4 adds a whole lot of Sha Crystals to the market by way of Timeless Isle gear tokens. As long as your enchanter is eligible to create an item from it (i.e. a hunter can open Timeless Mail tokens, but is class-restricted from opening Timeless Cloth, Leather, or Plate), you get a 496 epic that turns into one or more Sha Crystals. Surplus tokens of useable type picked up by any of your alts can be mailed to an enchanter, turned into an epic, and disenchanted.

Also, using a Burden of Eternity on a Timeless token of any type (trinkets excluded) will allow you to create a disenchantable epic for Sha Crystals while bypassing the armor class restriction on your enchanter, but with the rarity of Burdens, it's generally not a good idea unless you have literally nothing else to upgrade with it.

Comment by lecanard2

shaman crystal?

Comment by Goodwinn

Disenchanted from Epic (purple) items with an item level of 420 to 572*

Comment by banshee

In the beginning of WoD at least, I'm getting Sha Crystals from disenchanting WoD epics. It seems to be the item level that determines which crystals you get. Items above ilvl 600 give Temporal Crystals and below give Sha Crystals.